Some employees have already been told that their position is being eliminated while others will learn of the layoffs in the coming weeks.

It's not a great day for hundreds of employees at Amazon'sSeattle headquarters.

Layoffs at the company are rare. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

"For affected employees, we work to find roles in the areas where we are hiring", the online retailer assured. Its Amazon Go store concept - which recently opened in Seattle - involves no checkouts with all goods bought via an app.

The news of a worker reduction in one particular area comes after years of nearly rapid hiring, but also an abrupt change in the other direction.

In the year 2017, Amazon created about 130,000 jobs worldwide and cloud-computing has played a key role in Amazon's expansion.

Reuters has reported that the jobcuts would be in the "low hundreds". The latest layoffs will take place in its consumer retail business that includes Amazon books, toys, and grocery units, to create room for help in business that are expanding such as digital entertainment, AWS, and Alexa.

Amazon's headcount grew rapidly past year, up 66 percent from 2016.

The company hired 130,000 people worldwide past year, with its full-time and part-time headcount rising 66% from 2016 to 566,000 in 2017.

Some of the sources said that because the company is seeking space to expand outside Seattle, it's slowing down the hiring process. The aim, the company says, is to reduce layers of redundant management and keep the company flexible and fast-moving.

Amazon reportedly had 4,000 job openings in Seattle as of Monday. "We do not use our performance management process to achieve head-count goals".